


Little Boxes

by TerresDeBrume



Series: Boxes 'Verse [1]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Avatar & Benders Setting, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Gen, PTSD and discussion thereof
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-29
Updated: 2013-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-16 13:31:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/862582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerresDeBrume/pseuds/TerresDeBrume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Sometimes when bad things happen to us, we’re very, very afraid. And sometimes, when, the fear is too much, it stays in little locked boxes, with keys in different shapes, and when we see the key, the fear comes right out again, as if the bad things were still happening.”</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In which seven years old Noah has an important conversation with his parents and extended family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Boxes

**Author's Note:**

> You don’t really need to know ATLA to read and understand this. All you have to know is that normal Benders can only manipulate one element (Air, Earth, Water or Fire) while the Avatar can manipulate the four, as he/she is supposed to maintain balance in the world.
> 
> Also the map of Panem I use as a geographical reference is [this one](http://www.artifacting.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/panem-map.jpg), created by [aimmyarrowshigh](http://aimmyarrowshigh.livejournal.com/32461.html) and [badguys](http://badguys.livejournal.com) :)

Noah only wanted to cheer Daddy up.

 

It’s always difficult for Daddy and Uncle Haymitch to be happy during the Bending Tournaments, because people will always ask them to come compete, even when they always say they don’t want to fight with Bending anymore… and it’s difficult for Daddy to say no when other grown-ups don’t listen.

Sometimes, Noah thinks maybe it would be easier to make them listen if Daddy could use his voice, but his throat is painful when he speaks so he almost never does –and Uncle Haymitch is forbidden from answering the questions when Noah is there to hear, because he uses too many bad words and Mommy doesn’t want Noah to repeat them. Not even the ones that are only bad words in District Twelve.

 

Noah thought, maybe flowers would help.

There’s a patch of them at the point of the little island they live on, but there’s also a cliff there, and Mommy doesn’t want Noah to go there alone –Mommy doesn’t really like the sea, even if she lets Noah drag her to it from time to time. So Noah thought, since he’s allowed to go down to the docks if there are people to watch him there, he would go to the Ferry that brings the supplies to their island and buy some exotic flowers, things that they can’t find growing in the wild around here… the red one seemed a good choice. They smelled good, and they looked pretty, like Auntie Katniss’ fire and Auntie Johanna’s working shirts, and Noah was really, really proud of his gift until he brought it home.

He thought he’d found a good gift, but when he held them up to Daddy in the living room, Daddy started to throw up on the couch, his skin all pale, shaking like Mommy sometimes does during Great Tides. Noah got scared then, more scared than he was when he was a really little boy and Daddy would speak, so he let go of his flowers and ran to Uncle Haymitch’s house, just as he’s supposed to do when there’s trouble and Mommy or Daddy can’t help –Mommy left for the mainland this morning to pick their guests off the train, and they’re not going to be here until lunch.

 

Uncle Haymitch came to Daddy’s house immediately with his Bending Staff and the kn ife he always keeps with him, and when he saw the flowers he threw them at Noah and yelled to put them in the garbage.

Noah’s chest constricts as he realize he hasn’t even done that, sitting on the porch instead with his hands over his ears to block Daddy’s pained whines, and his eyes staring at the ground, toes digging in the sand-filled grass to give himself something to hold on –Daddy always says when you’re scared, you have to find something to hold on to.

He thinks he’s doing a good job of staying calm like a big boy and waiting for Mommy to come back and tell him what to do, but when he finally sees her come up the path with his Aunties Katniss and Johanna and his Uncle Peeta, Noah can’t help it. He burst into tears and, abandoning his flowers again, he runs into her arms, burying his face in her chest.

 

“I’m so-o-rry,” he cries, clutching the soft worn fabric of Mommy’s turquoise dress, “I’m sorry Mo-mmy! I didn’t—I did-didn’t—knew!”

 

Mommy’s hand in his hair is soft but her arm around his waist is strong, almost too strong, and there’s nothing that makes Noah feels safer in the whole wide world, nothing ever –Mommy can’t Bend, but she has the strongest arms Noah can think of, and when she hugs him it’s like she can pull him away from every problem ever.

 

“It’s okay sweetie,” she says into Noah’s hair, “It’s okay, I know you didn’t do it on purpose. Shh, it’s over, see? Uncle Peeta got rid of the flowers.”

 

Noah looks around and sees it’s true: Uncle Peeta is limping toward them, his cane reaching deep in the sand-covered path, but then Noah looks at his Aunties and, when he sees how pale Auntie Katniss has become, fresh tears make their way out of him, shaking him from head to toes.

 

“I’m sorry Auntie Katniss!” He repeats, “I didn’t knew!”

 

It seems like it takes forever for Auntie Katniss to answer:

 

“You didn’t do it on purpose, Noah.”

“Let’s go to the geese, okay?” Mommy suggests, and Noah nods.

 

He likes the geese.

They’re Uncle Haymitch’s, and they never go too far from his house, but they often wander around Mommy’s and Daddy’s houses, looking for something to eat –Uncle Haymitch brought them with him when he moved here from District Twelve last year, and they’ve been more efficient than the guard dogs the District Mayor tried to give them ever since.

Noah knows Mommy likes the geese, because the noise they make cover the sound of the waves and sometimes, she needs to not hear it for a while. As a result, Noah likes being among the birds, too,n even if they make weird pets.

 

They mill around them when they reach the back garden, which is a patch of grass from which you can’t see the ocean, and Noah lets Mommy maneuver them onto the whitened log they use as a bench every time they come here.

The door lets out the familiar scream that Noah used to be terrified of, and Uncle Haymitch walks out of Daddy’s house with a tired face, rubbing at his eyes with his free hand while the other one holds onto his Bending staff.

 

“Hey, Droplets,” he says when he reaches Noah, the lines on his face deeper than usual, “I’m sorry for yelling at you earlier. I was worried about your ‘Pa, and I didn’t think about how frightened you’d be.”

 

Noah, who burrowed closer to Mommy when Uncle Haymitch came near them, gives the tiniest of nods.

Uncle Haymitch is Noah’s scariest uncle, with his big voice and his big knife always on his hip, his hand never really far from the handle. Sometimes it’s reassuring to know he has it, like that time the News said something called _mutts_  escaped the Capitol and Noah couldn’t sleep. Mommy explained they escaped really, really far, in the north of District Eight, but Noah wouldn’t sleep until Uncle Haymithc rolled out a pair of old blankets on the floor by Noah’s bed and settled with his knife in his hand like he always does.

Sometimes, Noah thinks his family is a little scary, even for him, even though most of the grown-ups on their island are sort of scary people. It’s just, sometimes, Noah thinks his Uncles and Aunties can be very frightening, and when they are it’s difficult to remember they know how to be nice, too, especially when he doesn’t see them all that often.

 

Uncle Haymitch sighs, then looks at Auntie Katniss and at Mommy before he says:

 

“I’m really sorry. Your ‘Pa’s showering now, he’ll be better soon.”

 

Noah doesn’t know what ‘soon’ means. Mommy says it means ‘after a short time’, but when he asks how short is short, nobody knows how to answer him.

 

“Were they bad flowers?” Noah asks from the safe space inside Mommy’s arms.

“No, they were lovely flowers,” Uncle Peeta tells him.

“But Auntie Katniss dislikes them too.”

“It’s not the flowers sweetie,” Mommy says, “it’s the things they remind us of.”

 

Noah moves away from her chest then, trying to understand what she means. How can memories make Daddy vomit and shake and look like he’s going to die?

(Noah knows what dying means. His pet seagull died last winter, and that was the worst thing ever. He doesn’t want Daddy to die, too.)

 

“Do you remember,” Momy continues, stroking a curly strand of bronze hair away from Noah’s face, “when the wild dogs came in the island and bit you very hard last summer?”

“Yes,” Noah tells her, because he does.

 

Auntie Katniss came to visit with Uncle Peeta not long after, and she told him the stories of how she used to hunt wild dogs to make stew –Noah asked if the wild dogs gave her the scar on her left arm, too, but she said no and wouldn’t tell him another hunting story afterward.

 

“And you remember how you were a little afraid of Floppy after?”

“Yes,” Noah agrees, “But Floppy wasn’t mean.”

“Of course he wasn’t,” Mommy says, “but at the time you were too afraid to remember that.”

 

Noah nods, knowing it to be true –that’s what he loves best about Mommy. Sometimes she covers her ears against the ocean and sometimes she looks at something she’s the only one to see, but most of the time she’s the bestest Mommy ever, because she tells Noah how things are so he can understand easily.

 

“Sometimes when bad things happen to us, we’re very, very afraid. And sometimes, when, the fear is too much, it stays in little locked boxes, with keys in different shapes, and when we see the key, the fear comes right out again, as if the bad things were still happening.”

 

Noah waits a moment, to make sure he understands everything, then asks:

 

“Does Daddy’s box have a flower-shaped key?”

“Not just flowers,” Uncle Peeta says as he sits down in the sand, in front of Noah and Mommy, “Roses. That’s the name of the flowers you picked.”

 

Noah nods and takes time to think again, to remember what the flowers looked like really well so he doesn’t open Daddy’s little box again. Then, as quietly as he can, he asks:

 

“Mommy, do you have a little box, too?”

“Yes,” Mommy says simply. “But it doesn’t work like your Daddy’s. Every little fear box is different. The keys change from person to person, and sometimes they change with time, too. Sometimes the box goes away, and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s difficult to deal with people who have little boxes, because we can’t always know how they work, and when the box opens it can be frightening, but that doesn’t mean they’re bad people. Just people who lived through very bad things.”

 

It’s a bit difficult for Noah to understand everything. He doesn’t know how those fear boxes work, and he’s not sure he understands how a key can change with time, or how a key can be the shape of the sound of the ocean –because he’s sure sometimes that sound opens Mommy’s fear box. What he does know though, is that he doesn’t want to be afraid of people with little fear boxes.

He thinks it’s not their fault they’re afraid, and it’s unfair to be afraid of them for the bad things that happened to them.

 

“Do Uncle Haymitch and Uncle Peeta and Auntie Katniss and Auntie Johanna have boxes too?” He asks, wanting to be sure.

“Yes,” Auntie Johanna says with a shrug and a grimace, showing that she doesn’t like the name. “Most people our age do.”

“Why?” Noah asks, and then watches his family look at each other with funny looks on their faces.

 

Noah is about to ask his question again, when he hears the soft sound of bare feet on the sand coming up behind him, and instantly disentangles himself from Mommy’s arm to embrace Daddy’s thighs and press his forehead against him, feeling the slight rise of scars under his cheek.

 

“I’m sorry Daddy,” he says, “I didn’t wanted to open your little box.”

“I’m not angry,” Daddy says in the raspy, strange voice that scares the other children of their island. “I know you’ll know better now.”

 

Noah nods against his thigh, then follows him to the log where they sit down next to Mommy, until all the others sit down too, even Auntie Katniss who keeps clucking her tongue at the geese.

Daddy takes a long pull of the water he keeps in a wineskin with him, and Noah knows to turn to him then. It’s not often Daddy gets ready for long stories, so when he does, Noah listens.

 

“We have little boxes because before you were born, Panem was ruled by a very, very bad man. He killed a lot of people, and in the end there was a war. Lots of people remember it. And your aunties, your uncle Haymitch and I, we were sent to make sure this man wouldn’t hurt anyone anymore. That’s why our boxes are a bit bigger than most people’s.”

“You were _Team Avatar_?” Noah asks, eyes going wide with surprise.

“Who told you about Team Avatar?” Auntie Katniss asks, “I thought you weren’t supposed to know about that.”

“I….”

 

Noah looks at Daddy, who took some more water out and is now using his Bending to take the pain out of his throat. He tilts his head to the side, like he does when he’s asking a question, and the whistle he keeps around his neck jingles, the cord brushing against the big, big scar there.

 

“C’m’on,” Uncle Haymitch says, “We’re not going to punish you. Right Annie?”

 

Mommy shakes her head when Noah looks at her, so he turns to the ground and mumbles:

 

“Meric did. He said the real Avatar turned Evil and pretended he wasn’t the Avatar, so the Benders’ council took a Bender from each element and made them into a team to replace the Avatar.”

“Nailed it,” Auntie Johanna snorts. “But you shouldn’t hang out with this kid too much. That stuff’s not your age.”

 

It’s funny to hear Auntie Johanna say that, because she’s the smallest person in Noah’s family, but she’s also the scariest, and for a long time he didn’t even want to say hello to her out of fear. Noah always hear her say people need to ‘toughen up’ and ‘stick it out’… when there’s something Noah wants to do that Mommy says is not his age, Auntie Johanna is usually the one who says he can do it.

It’s weird to hear her say something is not Noah’s age.

 

She must know what he’s thinking though, because grown-ups have special powers like that, and she says:

 

“Yeah, that’s not your age. Climbing a tree, running down the hills, jumping in a pond… that’s stuff all kids do, and you’re more than big enough for it. Dealing with…” (She pauses to make a face, then says, “ _little boxes_ ” like it tastes really bad on her tongue) “That’s not the same. That’s the kind of stuff that’ll turn you into a grown-up in no time. You got a chance at being a real kid and growing up without caring. Don’t throw it away just ‘cause a bigger boy is trying to impress you. Be smarter than that.”

 

Noah nods, gap-mouthed.

Mostly because he never dared saying ‘no’ to Auntie Johanna, but also because she really looks like she wants him to understand something –and also because Auntie Katniss looks like she agrees with Auntie Johanna, and that never, ever happens.

 

“I will,” he promises.

 

Uncle Peeta reaches out to ruffle his hair and Noah laughs, trying to grab his uncle’s fingers to see if there’s paint under his nails again –there’s always paint under Uncle Peeta’s nails, when he’s not baking. It’s like everyone in Noah’s family is a Bender except Mommy, and Uncle Peeta, who is a Color Bender. He makes beautiful painting all the time… Someday, Noah will ask him to paint the sea for him and he’s sure Uncle Peeta will make it look even better than the real sea.

 

“I’ll remember,” Noah promises again. “And I won’t open your box ever again Daddy, I promise!”

 

Daddy smiles and kisses the top of Noah’s head, and just like that everybody is smiling again. Noah didn’t realize how weird and frightening it was to have them all look at him with very serious faces and no smiles. It felt a bit the same as when he’s been playing with Meric  and they didn’t want to tell the adults what they’d done because they wouldn’t understand, except this time the grown-ups were the ones who didn’t want to say what they’d been doing.

 

“Now come on Droplets,” Uncle Haymitch grunts as he rises to his feet, “I said I was going to take you flying before lunch, didn’t I?”

“It’s lunchtime now Uncle Haymitch,” Noah says, but Mommy smiles and says:

“Yes, but I think you two still have time to go for a ride before everything is ready.”

 

Noah beams and runs to Uncle Haymitch’s always-open kitchen door to retrieve the harness they use so Noah doesn’t fall and get hurt.

 

“Uncle Haymitch,” he asks after they’re in the sky and nobody else can hear them, “How do you make little boxes go away from people’s head?”

 

Uncle Haymitch takes a sharp turn to avoid a lost bird, then gets closer to the water so they’re flying right above a group of dolphins who squeal and try to jump over them. Then, after a long time, he says:

 

“Different things work for different people. Sometimes you don’t make the box go away, you just teach people to live with it and how not to open it. There are doctors for that… head doctors, I guess.”

 

Noah nods sagely, then says:

 

“When I grow up, I’ll be a head doctor, and I’ll make Mommy and Daddy’s box go away, and then everyone else’s.”

 

Uncle Haymitch’s chest rumbles against Noah’s back when he chuckles and says:

 

“You do that, Droplets. You do that.”

 

Then he starts making cartwheels in the air and Noah can only scream in delight as he tries to drag some of the sea foam behind him. There will be many an occasion for him to remember today’s conversation about little boxes, and many times when he will feel sick just thinking about what must have happened to his parents and their friends to turn them into the people they are now… for now though, there’s an explanation, a safe present, and a future.

 

Noah doesn’t know it, but it’s everything his family ever wished for him.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, comments and critiques are the best salary I can hope for <3


End file.
